


the colour behind your eyes after an explosion has happened

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: F/M, Finale spoilers, flash fic of emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:41:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I am not worthy', he says, and she says no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the colour behind your eyes after an explosion has happened

Nolan Ross had never been handcuffed to a wall - well, not against his will - till he started buddying up with Emanda Amily Clarke-Thorne and her deliciously tangled schemes. He had never been stabbed in the arm, or indeed anywhere else. He had never broken a law - he had, at least, never broken a law that wasn't one of those bullshit cybersecurity privacy things which really don't even count.

He kinda likes the mayhem, but he loves the woman behind it. She's like elegant code - wait, that means something different to him than to you. Let him explain, as he would over one too many drinks.

"Good code is clean and not one letter longer than it needs to be, and it looks simple, like it has a single simple purpose and then when it runs it unfolds like an origami rose or an explosion or, or, a mandelbrot set and it curves" his hands sketch a leaf shape in the air "from input to output so flawlessly - ah, forget it". 

He watched Jack watch Emily and saw the way she looked back out the corners of her veiled brown eyes and wanted so badly for them to be happy, wanted them to have kids he could spoil, wanted Amanda to come out from behind Emily's mask and smile on her wedding day and see Jack see the whole of her. He has faith she's under there somewhere, commented out or in buried subroutine. He does not think very hard about whether the buried Amanda would have Emily's intensity, her immaculate execution and poker-faced plans. He does not think at all about Jack's possible reactions to all the things Emily has done, to her cunning and dirty hands, because her plots are part of her perfection and only an idiot wouldn't appreciate that, right? Right.

He bought her a Batman costume for Halloween. She almost smiled, then threw it contemptuously aside and went as a mermaid, gauze seaweed an unnatural green in her long, freshly-dyed blonde hair. Daniel whispered in her ear as she giggled breathlessly and utterly false while Nolan made nauseated faces into his drink. Daniel is nothing, barely worth despising (Nolan's not gonna let that stop him though). In that most damned of households only Victoria could be a match for Emily- the only Grayson even close to intelligent enough to meet her on equal ground - if that wouldn't be hideously incestuous and, y'know, they weren't mortal fucking enemies. He tucks the mental image away for when he's alone and tries not to feel like Emily is reading his guilty, turned-on mind.

Amanda strips off the Emily mask to take down the white-haired man and lo, it turns out Amanda is behind the badass part of Emily, the part that walks away from burning houses in what, in a just world, would be slo-mo to a soundtrack of doom.

Afterwards (the crash, the return of Fauxmanda, losing it all and getting back only the electronic scraps he'd thriftily salted away) she sits back and tries to put her mind into gear. He can see the wheels turn and grind in her eyes, covers her hand with his own. She's cold.

"Take the night off, at least." He pleads softly. "Ems, you've had kind of a long day - a long decade, even. In the morning we can - "

"I'll figure out how best to use this." She says. Her voice is a bridge of ice over a chasm. "In the morning."

"Of course you will." He says quickly, deferentially.

"Can I stay with you? This house - " She gestures at the packing crates, the shrouded furniture.

"Yeah - of course! Always." He says, too sincere, and coughs, trying to cover it

When he leads her to his best guest room, his utterly sterile best guest room where no guests sleep, she takes his hand and reels him in, pulling him unresisting down onto the bed with her. They hold each other and the intimacy of it, just hugging fully clothed and cheek to cheek, is almost shocking. Emily never - Amanda never does this, not without her masks on.

"Amanda." 

She takes a shuddering breath.

"I know you, Nolan. Don't try to make me feel it, not now."

"I know you too. Not well, but - " he shrugs, then takes her hand and kisses her knuckles. The feel of her skin under his lips is unreally sharp, like high frame-rate video.

"Better than anyone else." She says dismissively, but her fingers slide tentatively up the knobs of his spine and into his hair, caressing.

Kissing her is like perfect code, like an exponential curve, like jumping out of a crashing plane with the last parachute. Her mouth tastes like blood, a little, and he wonders idly if it's hers or his or better yet both, if he'll wake up with a drop of Amanda in his veins. Maybe more than a drop, maybe she'll take him over from the inside out. It wouldn't be so bad (it would be perfect).


End file.
